Kiana had prepared a whole bellyful of things to say.
In the sea of clouds atop Mount Taixu, even as she held her horse stance, she had rehearsed them countless times in her head.
She wanted to tell Su Yu that she had saved Bronya in the Sea of Quanta.
She wanted to tell him that all those games he'd made, all those efforts, had not been in vain.
She wanted to tell him that Fenghuang had been there all along, and that the two of them had already reconciled.
She had even worked out her opening line.
"Su Yu, I'm back."
And then, the moment her consciousness poured back into her body, every single line shattered to pieces.
The air in the bedroom was thick and sticky, like paste that wouldn't dissolve.
Kiana was panting violently. The brilliant gold that had lingered in her heterochromatic eyes receded like the afterglow of an ebbing tide, swiftly overtaken by a clear, broken azure.
Her legs trembled faintly from the lingering spasms.
This feeling... this white light exploding across her cerebral cortex, and that scalding, heart-pounding warmth inside her body that did not belong to her.
In those discs Teacher Himeko had hidden in the deepest part of her cabinet, in those adult videos that Kiana had secretly studied as a "combat manual," she had long since seen this kind of scene.
Even in those daydreams about Raiden Mei, she had once, half-jokingly, clamored about wanting to taste some kind of "beautiful-girl-flavored instant noodles."
So she knew all too well what had just happened.
He lay beneath her, his chest heaving violently.
The hem of his shirt had been yanked partway out of his waistband, his hair was plastered messily against his forehead, and the expression on his face—
Kiana's breath stopped.
She had never seen this kind of expression on Su Yu's face before.
It wasn't the stubbornness from when Sirin killed him in the consciousness space, nor the desperation from when he grabbed her on the rooftop, nor the careless flippancy of his everyday banter.
His eyes were red.
His gaze collided with hers, then bounced away as if scalded, landing on the ceiling, on the corner of the wall, on anywhere that wasn't her.
His throat bobbed once.
His lips parted, then closed again.
Nothing came out.
Because her consciousness had just slammed back from the solitude of Mount Taixu into this body—so overstimulated it was sensitive to an utter mess—Kiana fell into a brief system crash.
But immediately after, a rage and a sense of absurdity that nearly burst out of her chest took the place of shame.
She had actually, while she was away, used this body, used the honor of the Kaslana family, to do this kind of thing to Su Yu?
Looking at Su Yu lying on the sheets, his face ghostly pale, not even having had time to fix his clothes, Kiana's mind instantly completed an entire melodramatic soap opera of "Vicious Herrscher Violates Pure and Innocent Youth."
From her point of view, Su Yu was now not only a victim—he was practically a pitiful diner whose thigh-meat had been snatched away and carried off by a roadside beast.
That damned Herrscher of the Void had actually used her own body to bewitch Su Yu, and in this near-brutal way had defiled her Su Yu—
Looking at Su Yu's pale face, without a trace of color, Kiana could no longer suppress the tenderness, the grievance, and the heartache within her.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry, Su Yu!"
Kiana practically scrambled and lunged at him.
She didn't even care about the wet, sticky sensation against the soles of her feet—she flung open her arms and fiercely gathered Su Yu's whole body into her embrace.
Her tears fell like beads off a broken string, scalding as they struck the hollow of Su Yu's neck.
"I... I didn't know it would turn out like this! That bastard, that lunatic... how dare she bully you like this!"
Su Yu was squeezed by this hug, brimming with that Kaslana-style sense of power, until he nearly suffocated.
His whole mind went blank. He'd originally prepared dozens of responses for being punched flying by Kiana, or being cursed out as a pervert—but now what?
Kiana was crying. She was weeping bitterly over the "violation" he had suffered, and the heartache and self-blame in her voice were more genuine than even his own mother's.
This sense of déjà vu—a "ravished, unwed virgin lad" being rescued by a heroine—burned Su Yu's already short-circuited neural circuits completely into black charcoal.
Wha—what kind of development is this again?! Is this the on-set remake of some gender-swapped NTR wuxia novel script?
"Kiana... actually..."
"Don't speak! You must have been terrified, right?"
Kiana sobbed, staring fixedly at Su Yu with her faintly reddened eyes, cradling his face in both hands, her fingertips still trembling.
"What did that bastard do to you? Did she threaten you, too? I'm sorry... it's all because I'm useless, I actually let her exploit the opening..."
In her eyes, this fellow Su Yu was a thoroughly hopeless fool, an incurably soft-hearted pushover.
And at the same time, he was incomparably fragile—a "pet owner" who, at the slightest danger or accident, could perish at any moment, and who needed the protection of her embrace.
She simply could not imagine what had happened during the time she'd been away.
But Su Yu's despairing, vacant appearance led Kiana to fill in, in her mind, an entire drama that broke her heart beyond bearing.
That detestable Herrscher, that damned Sirin, unable to crush her will head-on, had come up with the method of tormenting the people closest to her—and she had set her sights on Su Yu.
Then, taking advantage of the time she and Su Yu had lost contact, she'd used Kiana's situation to threaten Su Yu, leaning by his ear and whispering, "You don't want Kiana to disappear, do you?" as a threat.
Forcing Su Yu to lower his proud head, leaving him no choice but to become that Herrscher's prisoner, humiliated by her in every possible way.
This was all her own fault!
All her own fault!
Because of her incompetence, because she hadn't managed to tell Su Yu in time, Su Yu had been defiled by that bastard Herrscher!
On ordinary days, when this fool was with her, on the surface he often put on an air of not caring—but Kiana could sense him sneaking glances at her.
When she sprawled on the sofa with no regard for her image, when her clothes rode up to expose her waist, when she'd just woken and her pajamas hung off her shoulder—
he would always sneak a glance at her, then move his eyes away, that pitiful look of wanting to look yet not daring to.
Completely and utterly a pure, innocent boy who'd never known a thing of the world.
She found it a little embarrassing, but a little funny, and sometimes she would even deliberately pretend not to notice, just to see how Su Yu would react—
And then it was all gone.
Everything was gone.
The Su Yu she wanted to protect, that "purity" she wanted to protect, that sincerity, that foolishness, that innocence—
all of it had vanished.
All of it had been stolen away by Sirin.
It's all because of me, all because of me!
I can't do anything, I can't do anything—
Su Yu opened his mouth, originally meaning to explain that it had been a misunderstanding involving Sirin's "submission ritual," but watching Kiana's expression—as if she wished she could rip Sirin out of her own belly and tear her into ten thousand pieces—he felt that anything he said now would just be pouring oil on the fire.
Kiana trembled ceaselessly amid her violent sobbing, her body pressing tightly against Su Yu's chest from the extreme emotional agitation.
The collar of that thin, flimsy nightgown had long since fallen open because of the earlier farce, and that warmth seared Su Yu's skin like a ball of fire.
Every rise and fall of her breath stirred up wave after wave of thick, heavy heat-tides of emotion in the air.
"Um... Kiana, I'm fine, really."
Su Yu patted her back somewhat stiffly. He felt that if he didn't change the subject right now, he might actually die on the spot from this extreme sense of immorality.
"What did you just say... the truth? And the Sea of Quanta?"
He changed the subject somewhat clumsily.
Kiana was still drowning in sorrow, unable to pull herself out, when Fenghuang's voice exploded in her mind—"This is no time for regret, Kiana, you have very little time left!"
Right.
Right.
She still had something very important to tell Su Yu, and Su Yu was still alive and well, still right here in front of her.
He hadn't been tortured to death by that Herrscher.
Even though he'd endured such pain, as long as she worked hard, as long as she did her utmost to make up for it afterward—
Kiana sniffled, pressing down the emotions roiling inside her.
Still gripping Su Yu's hand tightly, as if afraid he might suddenly vanish, she began to recount everything at a rapid pace.
"Last night... right when you were together with that Eden person, my consciousness was dragged into the Sea of Quanta."
"I saw Bronya... she was nearly killed by that old ancestor, Kevin."
"I don't know where the power came from, it seemed to be transmitted from your side—I tore open a hole and pulled her out."
As she said this, a trace of the resolve that belonged to a "Ranger" returned to her eyes.
"I met Fenghuang... she's been inside my body the whole time."
"She taught me the Tai Xu Sword Qi, and said that only by cultivating the Sword Heart can I seal that Herrscher away for good. But I'm not strong enough yet, so right now I only have a little over ten minutes..."
As Kiana recounted the entire sequence of events at a rapid pace, in Su Yu's field of vision a light-screen suddenly burst open.
[Detected: [Tame the Queen] progress has increased. Current progress: forty-five percent.]
[Ding-dong—wishing the Host a happy first "caught-cheating"! Though, what a pity—in front of the grand female lead Kiana, the little-man Host is the one who got defiled. Truly a lamentable household status~]
Happy your ass.
Su Yu fiercely flipped a middle finger in his heart.
Kiana watched the constantly shifting colors on Su Yu's face and assumed he was still shaken with lingering fear.
She lowered her head, somewhat bashfully and guiltily caressing Su Yu's fingers.
The corner of Su Yu's mouth twitched.
"Kiana."
"Hm?"
You can go back.
Kiana blinked.
"Go back? Go back where?"
"Back to your world." Su Yu drew his gaze back from the ceiling and let it land on her face. "Back to that world where Mei and Bronya are."
Kiana's breath stopped.
"The fact that you could project into the Sea of Quanta last night is the best proof."
"The System told me today that, from the very beginning, its purpose was never to make me into some plagiarist—making games, grinding awareness, raising bonds, all of it—it was all to make you stronger, to give you the ability to return to that world."
Kiana's lips parted, but no sound came out at all.
"After the game is released, the System will upgrade."
"By then, awareness can be converted directly into your ability points—speed, strength, mental energy, all of them can be enhanced." Su Yu's speech was picking up pace. "And the community-bond ability on my end can let you and me grow stronger in sync."
He paused.
"So the fact that you could tear open space and save Bronya in the Sea of Quanta wasn't a coincidence—this is the proof that you can go back."
Kiana stared at him, her whole face full of disbelief.
"You're saying... I really can go back?"
"You can."
"Back to Mei's side?"
"You can."
"Back to Bronya's side?"
"You can."
Kiana's chin was trembling.
She opened her mouth, and an immense, wild joy scattered the sorrow within her.
She wanted to say something, but her throat felt as if it were stuffed with a wad of cotton.
Fenghuang's voice sounded once in Kiana's mind.
"Kiana, your mental energy is about to give out. At most you have one more minute before you'll be pulled back."
Kiana's body stiffened.
One minute.
She had one more minute.
She had too many things she wanted to say.
But looking at Su Yu's face, all her words jammed up in her throat.
She could only keep it short.
"Su Yu... I still have to go back and cultivate."
"During this time, Sirin will still be controlling my body. But I just warned her... though she might not listen."
Kiana's voice grew very low, like a child who had done something wrong.
"There's one thing I want to beg of you... could you, could you talk with her? Tell her not to run wild on this side, and not to... not to bully you like she did just now."
"That is my body—"
As she said this, her voice became almost inaudible.
"I'm sorry, Su Yu."
"You must be in so much pain, right? Suffering that kind of grievance beneath that bastard's feet... once I really come back, I will definitely drive that Herrscher away for good."
"By then... whatever you want me to do to make it up to you, I'll do it."
She took one last look at Su Yu, her eyes filled with that resolve known as "protection."
"You have to wait for me to come back, Su Yu."
The next second, that clear azure in Kiana's eyes was instantly extinguished.
The amber golden light reignited.
Sirin was back online.
She didn't immediately get up, but kept that posture, feeling the strange sensation transmitted by this human shell.
This feeling... was soft and limp.
Like floating amid sea and clouds, every inch of her nerve endings trembling faintly under this nameless impact—and though her strength had been drained away, it was strangely... comfortable.
"What is... this?"
Sirin lowered her head and looked at her own toes, still gently curled, a flicker of confusion passing through her eyes.
It was the first time she had been dragged into the abyss of physiology.
She could not comprehend this , and could only classify it as some kind of high-grade psychic attack.
Su Yu lay against the pillow, watching this Herrscher of the Void before him—her gaze drifting, clearly at a loss as well—his heart still aching faintly.
"Squad Monitor—" he let out a long sigh in his mind.
Fenghuang's response was almost instantaneous.
"I'm sorry."
When these two words came out of Fenghuang's mouth, they carried a heaviness that Su Yu had never heard from her before.
A fifty-thousand-year-old senior, and her voice was actually trembling.
"I really didn't know it would be like this."
"I never imagined Sirin would do something like this."
"I... I don't know what to say."
"You've suffered, Su Yu."
In the eyes of that fifty-thousand-year-old relic, the Su Yu of now was simply a pitiful man who had been deceived by a demoness, toyed with body and soul, and then heartlessly abandoned.
"Ding-dong~ Miss Pink Elf has sent you a message~"
[Elysia: Su Yu, Su Yu! I've noticed your complexion has been pale lately, and you look really tired, so Eden and I specially went and picked some lingzhi for you in the nearby mountains to help build you back up! I'll send it over to the studio tomorrow. No matter how busy you are, don't forget to take good care of yourself~]
[Good night]
Su Yu closed his eyes, feeling utterly exhausted to the very limit.
Just destroy it all, and hurry up about it.
____
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉